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Back when typewriters dotted the earth, I read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but I can’t remember, when did they realize the end was near? Probably between the bottom of the eighth and the top of the ninth. Can’t remember whether they played baseball either.

I’m not sure what inning we’re in, but if Dayton, Ohio is our frame of reference, a few pitchers and catchers are stirring in the bullpen.

Recently, in the deep recesses of my pea brain, I’ve been outlining a course that explores our nation’s decline. This intellectual exercise was prompted by an incredibly tight and excellent 55 minute long ProPublica/Frontline documentary that I highly recommend on Dayton, Ohio titled, “Left Behind America”.

One question we will consider is how does our country improve the life prospects of young impoverished boys and girls in Dayton, Ohio; Janesville, Wisconsin; and Troy, New York, especially when addiction and mental illness are so common in their families?

We’ll also ask whether the challenges are best understood through the lens of psychology and concepts such as “internal locus of control” or sociology with its emphasis on systemic impediments to upward mobility like institutional racism, the loss of manufacturing jobs and the associated dismantling of labor unions, and educational inequities. Related to that, we’ll debate what roles local, state, and/or our federal government should play in providing Dayton’s youngest residents more equal opportunities in life.

We’ll also read two books that broaden our frame of reference to include rural America:

And given the President’s incessant demonizing of immigrants, I need your help finding materials, beyond the segment in Left Behind, that examine the important role immigrants are playing in reviving places like Dayton. Or any other materials that offer hope if not practical solutions.

Who is in? What other literary, artistic, non-fiction, and/or multimedia resources should we consider and what other ideas do you have for strengthening our course?

“After 17 months and more than $100 million replacing a damaged bridge and rebuilding the highway in two locations, drivers can once again skirt the western edge of the continent, forever burnished by wind, rain, waves and tide.”

Props to the much maligned public sector.

3. No PressingPauser would ever stereotype professional basketball players just because of their outward appearance, but just in case, there’s this.

After attending my first Quaker meeting in North Carolina 25 years ago, someone approached me. “You know,” he said with a hushed voice, “we’re not going to invite you back.” It wasn’t rude, the message was simply, “Cool if you return, cool if you don’t.”

Evangelicals are the opposite, their whole raison d’être is to persuade others to believe and behave like them. So when it comes to immigration, what do they want non-believers, Quakers, more social justice minded Christians, and the huddled masses to believe?

“Robert Jeffress, the pastor of Dallas’s First Baptist Church and a strong Trump supporter, told FiveThirtyEight that the separation of children from their parents was ‘disturbing’ but quickly added that Trump has the “God-given responsibility” to secure the border in the way he deems appropriate and punish people breaking the law, even if it appears harsh.”

When the national political pendulum inevitably swings, and a newly elected liberal president promotes more progressive immigration policies possibly including amnesty, don’t expect Robert Jeffress to wax philosophic about deferring to the president’s “God-given responsibility”.

Jeffress isn’t saying Trump is advocating exactly what evangelicals think Jesus might if he were advising on immigration policy today. In fact, I don’t think he’s referencing Jesus’s interactions with the poor and dispossessed at all. He’s saying everyone should respect the authority of the president because us evangelicals share his views on immigrants.

What are those views?

“. . . polling on white evangelical Protestants has shown that they’re more likely than any other religious group to support hardline immigration policies and to have negative views of immigrants overall. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that 70 percent of white evangelical Protestants are in favor of expanding the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.”

Does crossing the border illegally give evangelicals cart blanche for thinking of immigrants negatively? How does that justify their “hardline immigration policies” given Jesus’s preference for the poor, the downtrodden, the illegal? Evangelicals, what’s the biblical basis for your viewing immigrants so negatively?

“These findings line up with results from other surveys too, like a 2017 poll from the Public Religion Research Institute that found that white evangelical Protestants were the only religious group in which a majority (57 percent) said they’re bothered when they encounter immigrants who don’t speak English. They were also the likeliest to say that they have little or nothing in common with immigrants.”

I wonder if Jesus was bothered by people who spoke different languages? I wonder if he felt like he had little or nothing in common with those crossing borders. Also, I wonder how many evangelicals really know any immigrants on a personal level. My guess is, for the vast majority, immigrants are abstractions largely created by conservative news outlets that play on their default fear of the unfamiliar. Do evangelicals have more than sporadic, cursory, largely economic interactions with immigrants?

I’m lucky to be married to someone who teaches numerous immigrants English. A few have become family friends. The one distinguishing characteristic among all of them is their incredible work ethic. I find that, coupled with their desire to improve their families’ lives, tremendously inspiring.

“Daniel Cox, the research director at PRRI, said these findings help explain why evangelicals aren’t likely to abandon Trump over the child separation crisis, even if they’re troubled by it. ”More than other groups, white evangelical Protestants seem to perceive immigrants as a threat to American society,’ he said. ‘So even if they don’t like this particular policy, they’re on board with Trump’s approach to immigration in general, and that makes it likelier that they’ll see this as a tactical misstep rather than a breaking point.'”

How will evangelicals’ “hardline immigration policies” impact their efforts to fulfill their destiny by continuously adding to their fold? They must hope to convince potential converts that immigrants are a detriment to our nation’s well-being. And to ignore our nation’s history. And to fear cultural differences. And to defer to this President’s authority (but probably not the next).

“Past PRRI polling has shown that younger white evangelicals are much likelier than older white evangelicals to believe that immigrants strengthen the country or to agree that immigrants are the victims of discrimination, which may reduce their support for restrictionist immigration policies in the long term.”

“So the states of the Great Lakes region appear to be faced with a stark choice. It can . . . harness the modernizing forces of universities and immigration, setting itself up for revival. Or it can give in to the seductive impulses of nativism and hostility to higher education, and settle in for more decades of bitter, grinding decline.”

4. Solar’s Bright Future is Further Away Than it Seems. In related news, in the upper lefthand corner, we’ve had more sun this winter than in any time in recent memory. Almost feels like Denver. To quote Kurt Warner after his SupBowl victory, “Thank you Jesus!”

5. Millennials are screwed. Not the 13 seniors in my January seminar. They’re going to thrive, by which I mean change the world for the better. #skilled #hardworking #sociallyconscious

6. Special Education funding is a priority this session. Shout out to Jeanette Byrnes who is an ace committee assistant this session. Working her butt off wrestling very large copying machines and providing sundry support for two committees. And gaining new respect for working men and women everywhere. Tangent: Jamie Pedersen used to swim at the Olympia Y during session. Bizarre open turns that I’m not even sure I could demonstrate.

If you subscribe to the humble blog you received a link to a post a few weeks ago about my eldest daughter and her friends who were still struggling to come to grips with the U.S. Presidential election. Compared to them, I wrote in the post, I didn’t feel sufficiently aggrieved. My elaborating on why I didn’t feel sufficiently aggrieved upset my daughter so much she asked me to take the post down, which I of course did.

A few days later, an important mentor of mine wrote me a tactful but poignant note asking me to consider how my privilege might be preventing me from empathizing with my daughter and people like her who were still bitterly disappointed with the election results.

When I started this blog I wrote that “I’d get some things wrong.” Turns out, I got that right. I deserved Alison’s and Richie’s criticism. Normally, I’m very cognizant of my privilege, but this is a case where I have not been. In hindsight, I should have gone full-Socrates with questions about things I need to understand better.

When I asked if she’d engage in a blog-based dialogue with me, Alison responded enthusiastically. So here’s “Take Two”.

Ron: What are you most angry about? More specifically, who are you most angry with? Why?

Alison: I am angry that, as a country, selfishness and greed were valued more than empathy and compassion. I am angry that the health and safety and dignity of the same people who have always had their health and safety and dignity denied was devalued. People of color and women and gay people and immigrants were told explicitly that their right to life and safety was less important than the distress of Trump voters. I am angry because so many people have fought so hard, have sacrificed and died to make the progress that is now being washed away. Because a group of people are now in power (Trump and his advisors and appointees) who are going to work to restrict women’s right to make choices about her body, to destroy the environment, to cut social services, to delegitimize LBGTQ relationships and identities, to deny safe haven to refugees, to enable the proliferation of guns, and to divide immigrant families.

I am angry because injustice makes me angry. I am angry because seeing my friends suffer and grieve makes me angry. I am angry because the results of this election go against what I believe to be most fundamentally true and essential and against who I was raised to be. I am angry because the elections results weren’t a fluke. I didn’t think it would all add up to a Trump presidency, but I was angry about the way the election was being conducted and reported – the motherfucking false equivalences – as it was happening. I am gutted because Trump was not held to the same standard that Hillary was. Because he was not criticized, was not condemned, was not interrogated. I am angry because Donald Trump is a perpetrator of sexual assault and was not disqualified for that. That his criminal, violent offenses were treated with less interest and gravity than Hillary Clinton using an email server set-up that was exhaustively investigated and found to have no malicious intent or harmful consequences.

I am angry because misogyny was at the core of why Hillary lost and it’s being written out of the story – either by not being addressed or by being denied as a valid argument. I’m angry because racism was at the core of why Trump won and it’s being masked under a veil of economic populism. After being confronted with the most horrifying and overt display of racism and sexism and generalized hatred for anyone not white, male, and straight, this country still does not have the guts to look at our illnesses for what they are. We can’t handle looking our own weakness in the eye. It would be too scary to admit the extent of our sickness, too daunting to face, so those of us with the resources to have strong houses are turning a shoulder against a wind that’s tearing everything else out of the ground and pretending it’s not as strong. This self-serving cowardice makes me furious.

I am fucking furious that poisonous hatred and violent misogyny and racism and xenophobia and homophobia found a stage and a microphone and were applauded. I cry because people who hold these beliefs had them validated on election night. Because they woke up on Wednesday morning strengthened and affirmed in ways that will result in the suffering of vulnerable populations. I laid in my bed on Wednesday morning, unable to get the images I’d seen and stories I’d heard of Trump rallies out of my mind, frozen and scared and horrified in a way that I had never been before. And now I spend my days ricocheting between trying to keep myself afloat, and fearing, above anything else, no longer feeling devastated, no longer being angry. It’s left me stumbling.

The Sunday after the election I went to church. I needed to sit next to other people who were grasping, inside a structure that was built to house prayer, and for someone to tell me that this was all awful, all truly, truly awful, but that we would fight it. The churches in Boystown are great for this. I had spent the night at a friend’s apartment and accidentally thrown away my contacts the night before, so I sat in a pew, unable to see, and therefore feeling less able to be seen, listening to the pastor’s impassioned, furious sermon, weeping. She said a thousand things that I needed to hear, but this is the one that has stayed with me: don’t break ranks with the vulnerable. The advantages of my privileged birth afford me the possibility to turn into my own life, into the comforts I can provide myself, but that is unacceptable. There are people suffering, without such an option for relief, who are shouting as loud as they can that they are afraid. Therefore, the only possible course of action is to stand with them, because we share the same sacred humanity, and because I can not accept that anyone deserves less than another. Do not break ranks with the vulnerable. I’m aware I strayed away from the main question, sorry!

Ron: Thank you for not giving up on me! I better understand and appreciate the depth of your anger. In Arizona sometime in early October I think, Trump gave a truly hateful, anti-immigrant speech at a large rally. I challenge anyone to find a more hateful, unAmerican, anti-immigrant speech in the U.S. presidential campaign archives. Truly historic in the worst way imaginable. And yet, it got little play the next morning. Where we may differ is that despite that, I don’t think media coverage explains the election result. I think of the media’s coverage of the candidates like I do bad sports officiating, incompetent coverage of both sides tends to balance out. So that begs the question, what does explain it? Is it too soon to ask that question? If so, when can I ask my next, more analytical question? It’s Saturday, so church is out. Therefore, I’m going to watch the Bruin basketball team take it to the Ohio State Buckeyes while I anxiously await your reply. Despite the swearing, love you as always.

In the United States, students attend school six hours a day, 180 days a year. At most schools many of those 1,080 hours are lost to assemblies, frazzled teachers trying to get students’ attention, and myriad other miscellaneous distractions. Some researchers suggest that at some schools as much as half of that time is lost.

Conventional thinking about student learning, that it takes place almost entirely in schools, is terribly limited because students spend the vast majority of their time outside of school. How can we promote informal, natural, day-to-day learning over the other 185 days?

Here are some suggestions:

1) Spend time together outside. And pose questions about the natural world. About plants, animals, insects, the weather, the natural world more generally. Watch Animal Planet. Plant a garden. Ride bikes. Continually ask questions that defy simple yes or no answers. Why do teens swear so much? What purpose does it serve? Why do people litter? What’s the best way to prevent people from littering? Why?

2) Go to the closest public library and check out whatever books strike your fancy. And then read. Tell others about the books you most enjoy. Right now I’m digging The Little Way of Ruthie Leming by Rod Dreher. And I’m excited about what’s next in the queue, Nate in Venice by Richard Russo. My students often tell me they like to read, but not what’s assigned in school. Remind young people that the summer is a golden opportunity to decide for themselves what to read.

3) Encourage young people to write about what they’re doing or reading in a diary or in letters to extended family members. Or to write poems, stories, whatever’s most fun.

4) Plan a camping trip and thereby combine one and two—unplug and read in a natural setting.

5) Work some of what’s going on in the world into dinner conversations. Talk about Nelson Mandela’s fragile health, why young adults are cycling more and driving less, and the pros and cons of the evolving immigration bill.

6) Pose word problems in the car. The total distance of our trip is x, we’ve gone y, how much further do we have to go. If gas is $3.70 and we get 40 mpg, how much is this trip costing in gas? What if maintenance adds 10% more, then what’s the total? If I make $18/hour, how much time will it take me to pay for this car trip? Of course, adjust for age. The kitchen is a primo place for informal math learning too. Teach fractions while baking. Ask a young helper to write down what the recipe would look like if it was doubled. Or halved.

What other ideas do you have for promoting continuous learning that is a natural part of day-to-day life?

Of course the other option is to continue delegating teaching and learning to credentialed teachers. In which case you can just count down the days to the start of school in September.